...The suggestion that suicide bombings are 'about' the injustices done to the Palestinian people and the grievances arising from these is a miserable piece of apologetics, half saying what it doesn't have the courage to say openly. Yes, suicide bombings arise in the same political context as the context McGreal invokes by saying that that is what they are about, but the context doesn't justify them - any more than the war against terrorism justifies the use of torture (if it is true that the Americans are handing over people for torture to other national agencies). Suicide bombings are not just carried out by aggrieved people. They are part of a planned and co-ordinated strategy by Palestinian political organizations, directed against a civilian population. This makes them crimes against humanity according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court - endorsed as being such by Human Rights Watch. It bears repeating and then repeating once more. Suicide bombings are crimes against humanity, the concept of which emerged during the twentieth century precisely in order to put moral constraints upon what states and other organized political entities could do or require in pursuit of their objectives. Not even the struggle on behalf of a just cause legitimates them. They should be unreservedly condemned by everyone with civilized values and not 'understood', unless in the non-condoning sense of that word, where the effort of understanding is in order the better to oppose and combat them. Suicide bombings are no more 'about' the occupation or 'about' Jewish settlements than genocide is 'about' war...